Group items tagged

"I love the idea of making, inventing and tinkering. Just watch kids who are immersed in the activities and you can see the engagement. But is the learning authentic and relevant? I presented three sessions at the Free Maker Movement event at One Work Place on Wednesday, September 30, 2015 with some amazing educators who presented hands-on activities. The event will took place at our Oakland Center for Active Learning . I decided I needed to spend some time researching where the Maker Movement was happening and find examples of authentic learning. This gave me the opportunity to talk to several of my friends and share how they have transformed learning spaces to Makerspaces. Everyone I talked to made a point that it is about creativity not consumption. Yet when I went to different Maker events, I saw activities that an adult set up, purchased a kit or provided directions for activities. They were all fun, but I was having trouble seeing the connections to real learning or any ownership from kids."

"The use of rubrics in the classroom falls in and out of favor, as do other trends. This infographic demonstrates why rubrics, unlike other trends, should be here to stay. Rubrics, in essence, are an easy way to score student work objectively. They are succinct scoring charts that allow for student work to be fairly evaluated. Therefore, it can improve teaching methodologies and ensure unbiased assessment. Rubrics can also be used to help increase student agency and intrinsic motivation, a constant struggle in today's reward based culture. This infographic is neatly split into two sections, "Why Use Rubrics?" and "How to Use Rubrics?" This allows the use (presumably a teacher) to easily refer back to relevant information as needed to help deliver quality education, regardless of experience or expertise."

"It has been one of my goals this year to make math authentic, when and where possible. To make it a hands-on, active, and practical. To not just be numbers on a page filled with hypothetical situations, but to have the problems come to life. It's not the only way we practice math but it is part of our repertoire. My hope is that by making math real, when students do encounter the hypothetical, they will have a context for their understanding. They will see the relevance because they've experienced it. One of the ways we have begun to do this is through sewing. As we go, the process of creating through sewing has brought many grade four curriculum expectations to life and provided many opportunities for prompting students' thinking."

"Mention robots to many English teachers and they'll immediately point down the hall to the science classroom or to the makerspace, if they have one. At many schools, if there's a robot at all, it's located in a science or math classroom or is being built by an after-school robotics club. It's not usually a fixture in English classrooms. But as teachers continue to work at finding new entry points to old material for their students, robots are proving to be a great interdisciplinary tool that builds collaboration and literacy skills. "For someone like me who teaches literature by lots of dead white guys, teaching programming adds relevance to my class," said Jessica Herring, a high school English teacher at Benton High School in Arkansas. Herring first experimented using Sphero, essentially a programmable ball, when her American literature class was studying the writing of early settlers. Herring pushed the desks back and drew a maze on the floor with tape representing the journey from Europe to the New World. Her students used class iPads and an introductory manually guided app to steer their Spheros through the maze. Herring, like many English teachers, was skeptical about how the Sphero robot could be a useful teaching tool in her classroom. She thought that type of technology would distract students from the core skills of reading, writing and analyzing literature. But she decided to try it after hearing about the success of another English teacher across the country."

"The world wide web has afforded the common people opportunities that were literally non existent during the times of our ancestors. Opportunity grows in proportion to knowledge, and thus the age of information can also be recognized as the age of opportunity, for those who have vision. So whether you wish to explore the ideas of the brilliant minds past, elicit your imagination, learn more about philosophy, politics, economics, ancient history, or some other topic of interest - or maybe you want to acquire certain knowledge relevant to a particular field of expertise - the internet has provided you with everything you need to create new opportunities that will culminate in personal growth and long lasting success. Below you will find a comprehensive list of literature that has something to offer for everyone; *Big shout out to Tiffany Davis via Bachelors Degree Online for being the original source for most of these listings;"

"Newsela is an innovative way to build reading comprehension with nonfiction that's always relevant: daily news. It's easy and amazing."

"This fall, my computer science class will follow the new AP Computer Science curriculum framework while also including culturally responsive instruction that makes use of students' interests, community settings, and cultural and ethnic backgrounds. Some of the students enjoy freestyle rap and dance, so they will learn how to simulate or enhance their performances using code. Other students study drawing and painting, so they will learn how to use code to create their artwork. This approach is a gateway to computer science, using coding to foster creative expression, and supporting cultural responsiveness that addresses underrepresented students' lack of exposure to computer science."

"I visited a classroom this morning as the supervisor of our Educational Technology practicum. I love visiting schools, not because it gives me a sense of "relevance" but because it allows me to do something I rarely got the chance to do as a classroom teacher: visit other classrooms and watch the amazing things that happen. Somewhere in the back of my mind, there is this question, "What do you forget when you leave the classroom?""

"The merits of doing research and creating these reports and papers are valid. When they create them, students … Gather information Evaluate sources Organize and synthesize data Form ideas and cohesive thoughts Create a polished, finished product Cite where they got their information Here's the problem, though: the finished product just isn't very relevant to the real world, be it in the workforce or in people's personal lives. Reports and papers often end up where mine always did - in the trash. If students are going to do their best work to learn and create, shouldn't it be in a form they can be proud of - and that they want to show others? I think it's time that we turn research reports and papers on their heads. Here are 10 creative alternatives:"

"Asked to develop a technology-integrated lesson for 5th Math, I naturally leaned to using the iPad. However, the lesson is being developed as a district resource and not every campus has iPads or iPods. Thus, I created a hybrid lesson. Since the elementary math specialists already had a bank of word problems that they had used in a "Words to Symbols" matching activity, we only had to spruce up some of the text and make it applicable or relevant to the apps we planned on using."

"Regarding our 1:1 iPad Program commencing at the beginning of 2012 in our year 6 and 7 cohorts, i have attached all relevant documents which have been part of informing parents and our community about our iPad happenings so far. All documents are in PDF format and can be downloaded."

"Our initial reaction when seeing the following infographic from Mia MacMeekin was to think about instructional design rather than classroom management. That is, work backwards from a student-centered, inquiry-based, self-directed, and inherently personalized learning model where students, while plugged in to relevant digital and physical communities and working closely with mentors and peers, solved important and authentic problems through a mix of design, creativity, and macro critical thinking. Then we awoke from our naps, wiped the drool from our lips, and realized that for many teachers, the reality they face each day is very traditional:"

"Imagine students' artwork hanging in your school's hallway and beside each masterpiece is a QR code. When parents, students, and other teachers scan the code using a mobile device, they hear the student telling about themselves and the relevance of their art… Or what about a QR code in the back of a library book that allows you to hear a student's review of the book? Or a QR code sent home to parents that allows them to listen to their 1st grader reading or telling a story? Sounds difficult, doesn't it? Well, don't worry - it really isn't hard at all! I'll give you two options for recording the audio files and will show you a couple of ways to "embed" them into QR codes."

"Looking for some powerful apps to help your kids and students type fast? The selection below features some of the most popular typing apps in Chrome app store. As usual I only picked what I think are relevant for an educational context such as the classroom. Have a look and share with your colleagues:"

"n Mrs. Chellani's continual efforts to create an engaging learning experience for her students, she has found utilizing QR codes to facilitate collaboration to be highly beneficial. In order to review material discussed in an assigned video and in class in her Pre-Calculus and Calculus courses, she created QR codes with relevant questions on the material and its' applications. Students were placed in groups of four to five; and, using a QR reader app on their phone, they were able to view the question. Once the students worked on the problem together, they would confirm the result with Mrs. Chellani. When the solution was correct, they would be given the next QR code (i.e. question). The level of engagement increased dramatically with the use of QR codes and simply allowing students to utilize their cell phones in the learning process! "

"Over 20 fliers ranging from Visible Thinking and Formative Assessment to Make and Do for the iPad Crew, Tracy creates and curates relevant topics and resources using the web tool Smore***."

"Hypothetical situation: you're a student and your teacher has tasked you with identifying a topic that is important to you, understanding it, interpreting it, and then delivering a report to your classmates. Aside from the nerve-wracking part of talking at the front of the classroom (eep!) there are a lot of things to consider. For example, how do I find my particular topic? How do I find relevant resources, interpret what I read, and then distill it all into a presentation that shows I learned … you know … something."